THE INFLUENCE OF THE TRIADS ON THE DECORATIVE ARTS IN CHINA 三合會對中國和香港的裝飾藝術之影響

Style, the demand for style and the supply of style is an extremely fine-tuned, complex equation that only requires a small weakness in one element and the equation is compromised. Style icons are also an essential factor in creating a momentum for style to evolve.

In the context of early 20th century China and Hong Kong, this was a period of tumultuous change. Beneath the hood of the engine that powered the creation of wealth in such vast quantities in a relatively short space of time were the Triads. In China they were highly visible, while in Hong Kong they were an enigmatic presence. Many of the charismatic Chinese political leaders and style icons of the time were indirect products of the Triads or the Triads were their lifeline.

The decorative arts of the time reflected a new brashness and identity, so one can say without exaggeration that the Triads wielded a considerable influence on what are now relics of those heady times and somewhat notorious cities.

The very concept of Triads having any influence on the decorative arts would appear incongruous to most people; it is nevertheless a reality that had considerable momentum in the late 19th century and early 20th century. To fully comprehend it as a phenomenon, one first has to understand the original concept of the Triads and then trace its evolution, probably proving along the way that a leopard is capable of changing its spots.

In the 21st century the term “Triads”, taken within the general context of China but through Western eyes, would almost certainly conjure up an image of organised crime and violence, with possibly a degree of martial arts thrown in for good measure. To define the term accurately is probably nigh impossible since its evolution during a period spanning well over three centuries has caused changes and distortions that render the original notion unrecognisable. To define the term in simplistic terms is in itself somewhat of an oxymoron for it is best imagined as layers of swirling mist; each layer being a stratum of either supernatural, religious or secular beliefs and goals that somehow come together to form an organisation of singular intent, brotherhood being its catalyst– yet it is a fraternity that is very much hierarchical that in itself tends to cause dissonance.

Probably the nearest equivalent in Western culture would be Freemasonry, but just as freemasonry means different things to all those who join, the same can be said for the Triads, or at least their original intention; coercion has been a highly probable factor of the latter since the mid-19th century and one would at least hope it was generally absent from the former.

The term “Triad” is a relatively modern English term that endeavours to describe the sacred symbol of the Chinese secret societies, a triangle surrounding a secret sign that is derived from the Chinese character hung [above], depicting a union of heaven, earth and man. The use of hung stems from Hung Wu [below], the royal title of the patriot Zhu Yuanzhang who founded the Ming Dynasty in 1368 CE. Hung Wu’s reign heralded a golden age of prosperity in China that was ended by the Manchu conquest in 1644. The ensuing Qing Dynasty caused the formation of principles behind the notion of the Triad.

In the 17th century, the Chinese triad society [HungMun] was also known as Tien Tei We [Heaven & Earth Society] or San Hwo Hui[Three United Society] in the early 19th century; all were very much a product of Southern China. Its main purpose for existing was to overthrow the new Qing Dynasty; the Manchu were seen by the majority Han people as foreigners. With a strong patriotic dogma, the Triad maintained an iron control over its blood brother members, imposing high expectations of total loyalty and righteousness. In its early purest form, the Triad maintained secrecy and its cultural integrity as well as its ceremonial paraphernalia, methods of recruitment, rituals, initiation ceremonial, sense of charity and welfare, secret codes and mode communication. In this respect, the Triad was an Eastern parallel of Western Freemasonry, but unlike the latter the Triads’ main purpose for being was to reinstate the Ming Dynasty; it also had little in common with the concept of “trinity” found in Gnosticism and Platonism – the biblical trinity is not a triad.

The integrity of the original concept remained from its inception through to the 19th century when Triads began to appear that derived income from exacting so-called protection money from peasant farmers, even formalising it by issuing receipts. In just 100 years, the populations of many of the southern China provinces doubled, greatly accelerating after the First Opium War and the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. As the population expanded, so the Triads proliferated; Triads fast became expert at seeking to thrive from any weak link in society or from insurrection. Any attempt by the Qing court to counteract insurgency was futile and this only resulted in politicising the Triads.

During this period, Triads tended to operate and proliferate in rural areas where government control was particularly weak. Large cities as well as areas that were centred around a particular artisanal industry tended to be Triad-free; there is no evidence of Triads operating in Jingdezhen, the centre of the porcelain industry, for example. Also in this period, Triad leaders tended to be uneducated or poor men from the lower strata of Chinese society; pedlars, soldiers, paupers, shopkeepers, impoverished scholars etc. The only exception to this rule were certain factions of the Heaven and Earth Society that were formed from a hierarchical lineage. What was common to all forms of Triads was the concept of “righteousness” and “brotherhood”, however the latter could often become in conflict with the former when a brother’s duty was to help another brother evade the rule of law; in Triad terms a man could only become a man of integrity through righteousness, the interpretation of which placed duty to one’s brother above duty to the law and the land. Since the vast majority of Triad members were illiterate and almost all the dogma of each Triad faction was embodied in text, the interpretation and spreading of that dogma was in the hands of the literate few who tended to seize upon the advantage they had through exaggerated theatricality. The disaffected majority were often in awe of the few; a trait that was to be repeated several times in history in the 20th century in Europe.

Of the known 96 Triads that existed in Southern China in the late 18th/early 19th century, 39 existed solely for the purpose of looting other people’s homes, 26 for mutual “protection” in “emergencies”, 15 simply for collecting initiation fees, 11 for plundering in towns, villages and cities and 5 for helping to resist arrest and to participate in communal protest.

It is only in the late 19th century, when the early signs of an inevitable fall of the Qing Dynasty began to appear as a result of a succession of rebellions and general unrest, an evolutionary process began and quickly gained momentum resulting in militant and criminal elements to flourish, still under the guise of the Triad. It is only now that Triads began to display a desire to acquire political power.

That an essentially destructive construct could be presented as having the capability to provide a stable foundation for a new era of Chinese decorative arts is not as bizarre as it sounds; it is simply a matter of fact, albeit unforeseen, borne out of the fast-moving and cataclysmic period in China’s history in the early 20th century. That said, the decorative arts was far from the minds of this new age of Triad leaders and their followers, any influence that was brought to bear was unplanned and symptomatic of the chaos, violence, crime and megalomania that came to plague Chinese society.

It wasn’t until the last years of the 19th century that a highly incongruous union occurred between a Cantonese Christian convert and 3000 Triad members in Hong Kong. Born in Guangdong in 1866, Sun Wen underwent conversion and was baptised in 1884 in Hong Kong, having been educated in a succession of Christian schools including one in Hawaii; Sun Wen eventually took on an honorific name by which we all now know him as, Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the eventual first republic of China in 1911.

That Sun Yat-Sen, a devout Christian, was to be supported by his Christian pastors and friends in Hawaii and Hong Kong his entire life is in itself not particularly surprising, but that this support continued when Sun laid the foundations of his conspiracy for an uprising in Canton against the Manchu regime, it did so under a cloud of incongruity, particularly since it was a revolt that could only be achieved in tandem with Triads.

The Qing government became aware of the plot and it was the Christian involvement they most feared since it reminded them of Hong Xiuquan and the Taiping Rebellion; the man who believed he was the brother of Jesus and who successfully founded pockets of the “Taiping Heavenly Kingdom” in Southern China with himself installed as “Heavenly King”. Hong Xiguan was his own worst enemy and it was his brutality wrought in the name of his religious fantasy on hundreds of thousands of Chinese people that eventually caused his own troops to rebel. He eventually committed suicide, described by his cousin as his having taken “manna”; it is now generally believed that Hong Xiuguan suffered from psychotic delusions which, in the context of tens of thousands of followers who would otherwise have been reconciled to a life of hunger and abject poverty, would have seemed an attractive option.

In 1904 a sect of the Heaven and Earth Society that had existed for some time was the source used by Sun Yat-Sen to leverage financial support for his quest for revolution and the founding of an eventual republic based upon his “Three Principles of the People” – nationalism, democracy and welfare that would allow the distribution of land equally among the people. To achieve this he formed the Tongmenghui. By 1908, a total of six failed uprisings had occurred. Sun’s leadership came under threat from a rival faction within Tongmenghui that accused him of trying to cause a revolution for his own profit. Sun and his loyal Tongmenghui members relocated to Penang to in an attempt to minimise anti-Sun factions.

Eventually in 1911, with Sun still in exile, what was known as the Wuchang Uprising proved successful and became the catalyst for the Xinhai Revolution that culminated with the abdication of the Last Emperor Puyi in 1912 and the transfer of power to a provisional coalition government. So ended over 2000 years of Imperial rule in China, but no matter how autocratic and fundamentally wrong that rule was, what at least it did provide was a rigid framework; the sweeping away of that framework based on whimsical ideology alone was to lead to decades of political division that at times could be called warlordism. Similar modern-day parallels may be seen in the Middle East.

The aforementioned coalition was between Sun Yat-Sen and Yuan Shikai, once an ally of the late Empress Dowager Cixi but achieved through varying degrees of scheming on his part and fired by his personal belief in the need for a constitutional monarchy based on Japan’s Meiji and Bismarck’s vision for Germany. In Yuan Shikai’s mind he saw himself as constitutional Emperor of a new China. With Sun Yat-Sen in exile at the time of the uprising, Yuan Shikai had the advantage; he was also a scheming manipulator.

Even though the revolutionaries had previously agreed and fought on the premise of Sun Yat-Sen becoming the provisional President of the Republic of China, they were militarily in a weak position. Through Yuan, they were forced to negotiate with the Qing. Yuan’s underhandedness resulted in the abdication of the child Emperor Puyi in return for him, Yuan, being granted the Presidency. Sun had no choice but to agree, but insisted the capital be in Nanjing, not Beijing. Yuan masterminded what seemed as a coup d’etat in Beijing and Tianjing, Sun had to compromise yet again and Yuan Shikai was finally elected Provisional President of the Republic of China with Beijing as its capital in February 1912.

The formation of the first republic was far from being a unifying event. Although the power was technically situated in the north, the reality of China became a fracturing of the south caused by semi autonomous factions that each had a centralised seat of power in a southern city.

In Canton, the Kuomintang was formed out of the Revolutionary Alliance by Sun Yat-Sen and Song Jiaoren; the name Kuomintang meaning the Chinese National People’s Party. Although Sung was the provisional president, his lack of military power forced him to cede the first presidency to Yuan Shikai. Yuan’s intent to reorganise China into provincial governments caused a tension between him and the Kuomintang that just grew progressively until in 1913 Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan, calling for a Second Revolution against Yuan Shikai. By 1914 China’s parliament was dissolved and a new constitutional compact was created that made Yuan Shikai effectively Emperor and, at the end of 1915, he was proclaimed Emperor of the Great Chinese Empire.

Unfortunately, for Yuan Shikai, he came under such opposition that he had to delay his accession and even though he ordered with the former Imperial potters a 40,000-piece porcelain set costing 1.4 million yuan, a large jade seal, and two imperial robes costing 400,000 yuan each, he never got to become the emperor. His new empire and the Yuan Dynasty was dissolved after only 83 days and he died 6 weeks later on June 5th, 1916.

China was left without any central government, numerous warlords seized local power and the next two decades were to be an ever-increasing convolution of warlordism.

Sun Yat-sen used the Triad Tiandihui [Heaven and Earth Society] to leverage his overseas travels in order to gain further financial support for his revolutions. Although many of the late 19th/early 20th century “revolutionaries” came from similar backgrounds of reasonably prosperous middle class Chinese families, this first noticeable seeking of financial support from the Triad hongmen was a precedent that would be prevalent over the next two decades or so. It should also be viewed in the context that it was during the late 19th century that the same Hongmen formed branches within Chinese communities in America, Canada and Australia; seeking overseas funding for both revolutionary and localised governance in China had a ready-made network and was a well-used one. So the man who is generally recognised as the father of the nation, Sun Yat-sen, would have been an impotent figure had it not been for Triad funding.

The first twenty years of the 20th century were not kind to the city of Canton. It saw a continuous cycle of power struggles, each exacting excruciating taxes in various guises mainly on the poor working classes in order to fund governance, modernisation of the city and even conflicts. Merchant investors, many having “returned” from the West found this haphazard chaos fertile ground to create wealth through opportunistic redevelopment of the city; rampant capitalism with hardly any overseeing or central control.

These early republican years in Canton saw a strange melange of activities, none of which were either integrated or coordinated, some being funded by private investment, some funded directly by Triads and some funded directly from the new Soviet Unionwhere Lenin himself took great interest in “potential” in China for furthering communist ideals as well as personal interest in individuals such as Sun Yat-sen and his protégé Chang Kai-shek. Disparate though the sources of funding were, they collectively created what seemed like an unstoppable momentum of redevelopment that in turn created a new momentum of prosperity that shone benevolently on the already prosperous middle class and Triad hierarchy and rarely shone on the levels below.

Strange as the bedfellows were, the theoretical conflict of interests between communist ideals and capitalist goals often share a common denominator that is rarely admitted by proponents of either camp; greed. Greed almost inevitably will create wealth; wealth almost inevitably will manifest itself in the decorative arts simply because they are a fine vehicle for manifesting wealth.

The Sun-Joffe Manifesto of 1923 was an agreement between the Republic of China Kuomintang and the Soviet Union. On the insistence of Sun Yat-sen, it asserted that while the Soviet system was not suitable for China, it announced cooperation between the Soviets and the Kuomintang to unify China. It was a very thin tightrope for all to consider maintaing balance on.

Despite the damage caused in Canton by all thepolitical unrest and social upheaval and, not withstanding the spiralling cost of living for ordinary residents, the city centre and the Pearl River Bund witnessed a new commercial district that was carved out of streets that had been literally bulldozed to make way for them. The city also saw a vast population expansion of over 1 million from rural areas.

Some 80% of the money being invested in Canton came from returning émigrés from Japan and America. Foreign banks were loathe to loan money to indigenous entrepreneurs and Chinese owned banks resisted local investment. What would appear to many outsiders as being happenstance, Canton did see a rapid rise in prosperity through industry and development, even though it was confined to a “privileged” minority. What did happen, though, was the phenomenon particular to Canton, namely the politicisation of the workers through organised guilds and unions that often escalated into full scale strikes; a phenomenon not shared by the equally burgeoning city of Shanghai where circumstances were totally different to the point were they could even have been separate countries.

The Shanghai International Settlement was the result of the Treaty of Nanking following the so-called First Opium War where the British established a settlement on the banks of the Whangpoo River ‘for the furtherance of their commercial interests”. The French and Americans followed quickly thereafter, each creating their own self-contained area; the three creating the Shanghai Municipal Council as a joint governing body. In 1862 the French concession dropped out of this arrangement and in 1863 the Shanghai International Settlement was created between the British and the Americans. Unlike Hong Kong or WeiHeiWei, Shanghai was not British sovereign territory but the Qing government had ceded sovereignty to the British after the Taiping Rebellion in 1853. The Chinese retained control of the original walled city area. While this somewhat complex situation worked reasonably effectively, it did occasionally display bizarre consequences; in order for a bus or tram driver to complete a cross-city journey, he would require a driver’s license for three countries!

A Shanghai tram in the British section of the city in 1920 at the junction of the Sincere department store on Nanking Road

Up until the end of the settlement in 1941after the Japanese stormed in after the shelling of Pearl Harbour, other foreign governments joined the settlement and the treaty relations. In 1843 Chiang Kai-shek signed a new treaty that effectively brought an end to the extra-territorial privileges of British and American subjects in Shanghai.

It is probably because of its unique governance and core population that Shanghai developed more as a parallel of Hong Kong than of Canton. What all three cities did have in common was the presence of Triads, Western-style department stores and a substantial affluent middle class and it was this potentially potent cocktail that was the engine that generated unprecedented wealth that at times crossed the borders of decency and entered the realms of decadence. Such wealth is almost always new wealth and the nouveau riche will normally create a style of its own. This certainly happened in Shanghai, which was often, in its short lifetime as an international city, compared to the decadence of Paris, Berlin and Buenos Aires. It happened to an extent in Hong Kong, although within the confines of British colonial stiff upper lip-ness and it existed in Canton, although confined to the upper echelons of Chinese society and were adept not only at spending money but also fleeing at a moment’s notice to Yokohama or Tokyo if the heat of unrest over boiled.

All new-moneyed societies require the instant gratification of frivolous retail therapy and any city that thrives upon the existence of Triad activities will generate a middle ground co-existence that sits somewhere between the Wild West and sophistication. In Shanghai there was always a feeling that tomorrow it all might end, in Hong Kong it was more permanent but they knew the date the lease ran out and in Canton the reality was that tomorrow might not even come. The “privileged” in all three cities, no matter what their time constraints were, had to have the trappings of wealth and, apart from their homes, if they could be portable, so much the better.

Jewellers, silversmiths and department stores were the ubiquitous purveyors of these trappings. In the space of just 25 years, China had moved at lightning speed to distance itself from the confines of Imperialism. The merchandise that was created as a result of that transition was light years away from the merchandise created at the end of the 19th century. Quality was still present, albeit in different measure, but a brashness crept in that in many ways reflected the new order. This confirms that Chinese Export Silver never fails to mirror current history at the time of manufacture.

The cocktail shaker is often used to symbolise the decadence of the 1920’s and 30’s and while this Wang Hing shaker [left] does just that, it still retains the traditionalism of Chinese allegory as well as superb workmanship. It could be viewed as the ultimate fusion pice in what must have been a highly confusing time and place. Yet, being a quality purveyor of luxury goods, Wang Hing & Co still manages to make the full transition to modernism with this 1930’s cocktail shaker [below], totally embracing the Art Deco but refusing to jettison the quality.

There’s almost a Georg Jensen quality to both the design and finish to this piece; certainly international and sophisticated and not what one would expect from an established Chinese luxury goods house of 80 years. This is without doubt a commissioned piece – one made by a very discerning customer.

Stylish people are always at the forefront of high society. They are the role models that in so many ways act as the pied pipers for followers of fashion and this is an age-old conundrum; followers of fashion do exactly that – follow. To be the pied piper requires style and charisma in order to create that enigmatic magnetism.

If one looks at the contemporary leaders and, more importantly, generators of style and fashion in the West of the time one will discover the underworld; in America it was the world of gangsters and the speakeasy and in Europe it was the night world of cabaret. In China and Hong Kong there was not only a frighteningly rapid move from the frozen world of tradition and Confucian values but the progenitorsof that move were all charismatic figures with a sense of style. The previously singular figure of the Empress Dowager Cixi who was the dominatrix of style in all senses of the word gave way to 20th century figures who all dominated in their own inimitable way.

Madame Chiang, the political mover and shaker wife of Chiang Kai-shek was the creator of a new Chinese style that was avidly copied by everyone who aspired to be anyone in Shanghai and Hong Kong society, copied even by Western women and Hollywood and almost single-handedly responsible for the cheongsam [qipao] becoming part of any self respecting Western couturier’s collection. As a couple, China had, for the first time, the ultimate stylish couple who graced the front covers of Western magazines, their style often making their politics an irrelevancy; they were irresistible as far as the West was concerned.

Very much an integral part of the complex engine that fuelled style in both Shanghai and Hong Kong was the proliferation of nightclubs, most of which were owned and operated by Triad leaders. The ubiquitous cabaret of the 1930’s created their own style icons, many of whom made the transition to the silver screen through the burgeoning film studios in Shanghai.

Anna May Wong [above right] is probably one of the most famous such actresses and she had remarkable stylistic similarities to Madame Chiang [above left]. Her movie with Marlene Dietrich, Shanghai Express, was the first major Chinese-themed Western movie that also featured the Triads within the plot, having the effect of making notoriety chic. Anna May Wong and Madame Chiang became the epitome of a phenomenon known as the “modern woman” [modeng funu], with cheongsams becoming shorter and the side slit rising daringly higher – the Chinese equivalent of the gangster’s moll look. As for Madame Chiang, she was described by one American journalist as being “small, dark, fiery and photogenic” and “reminiscent of Scarlett O’Hara” – Madame Chiang actually had a slight Southern twang when speaking English, having spent some of her school years in Georgia – she sounded uncannily like Vivien Leigh.

Shanghai and Hong Kong developed in tandem a highly sophisticated and very particular advertising genre that focussed on using an idealised image of “the modern Chinese woman”, often in the most incongruous contexts. While they may not pertain exactly to the product they are advertising, they do convey the vibrance of this new age in both cities and the high-speed momentum of the emancipation of Chinese women. The Aspirin advertisement is of particular interest when taken in the context of Western medicine within a traditional Chinese remedies mindset.!

Often referred to as the Chinese sphinx, Du Yuesheng was Shanghai’s charismatic king of the underworld, better known to all by his “stage” name Big Ear Du. Du headed the powerful and infamous Green Gang [Qing Bang]. As with Chicago, New York and Berlin, the underworld was largely responsible for generating the prosperity of a city; the Green Gang and Du became the powerful facilitator of almost every successful venture in Shanghai. Due earned the name “zongshi” [grand master].

The writers W.H. Auden and Christopher Underwood were in awe of Du, ferreting often to his mesmeric “rat eyes” and his “terrifying feet” in their silk socks and pointed European boots beneath his eponymous black silk gown and silk top hat. He lived in vast lavish mansions that were always equipped with trapdoors and tunnels for an easy get away and never trusted his tailors for fear of them seeing into his expensively fitted gowns a knife.

Du was President of the Tung Wai Bank and Chung Wai Bank in Shanghai, a director of the Commercial Bank of China and a director of several corporate companies. Although his main source of income was opium, he was rather bizarrely created by Chiang Kai-shek President of the National Board of Opium Suppression Bureau; meanwhile he ran the entire opium trade openly in the French concession area in complicity with the head of police and also served as a Council member.

Du and the Green Gang had a complex relationship with Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang; Du Yuesheng was co-opted into the regime’s power structure. Sharing with the Kuomintang the profits from of trafficking opium, the Green Gang brought significant financial support to Chiang Kai-shek, who had established many links with leaders of the criminal underworld.Chiang saw that the only way to effectively connect with the leadership of the Shanghai bourgeoisie was to have Du officially part of the political machine and equally Du saw that he would benefit from the National Party’s style of state corporatism. Du eventually fled to Hong Kong in 1949 when the Kuomintang exiled to Taiwan; remaining there until he died in 1951. His favourite expression all his life was “you have my word”; not many people argued.

In Hong Kong, the Triads were far more complex, having a conglomerate network of nine major organisations, each often being in rivalry to the others. The end result, though, was the same as in Shanghai – collectively they were the powerful “under the hood” engine without which not much of any consequence could effectively happen. Some of these, such as the 14K Triad, were started by ex-Kuomintang high ranking officials. Unlike the Green Gang, Hong Kong Triads had an international deck of cards that incorporated the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK.

Hong Kong Triads were visually far more low profile than the Green Gang; images of leaders are extremely rare even though their activities are well documented. The Triad Sun Yee On, for example, worked in conjunction with the Wo Hop To Triad but was a rival of 14K and Wo Shing Wo. Hong Kong Triads tended to be on a single ethnicity; Sun Yee on, for example, was Han Chinese – this was a typically Hong Kong situation. In Shanghai, and later across many Chinese cities, the Green Gang dominated the labour unions, while in Hong Kong it was a constant battle for the British administration to curb Triad infiltration of labour unions

Low profile the Triads may have been visually, but as with Shanghai, the extent and speed the luxury industries developed simply would not have happened without their full support and co-operation. Not only had the Chiangs understood this, but many of the heavy-weight investors and industrialists that were operating in both cities were inextricably part of this complicated web. Certainly the Hardoons and the Sassoons, both substantial landowners and developers in both Shanghai and Hong Kong could not have operated without collusion with the Green Gang and their Hong Kong counterparts; between the two families, most of the prime sites were acquired and developed, with even the site of the Kwok family’s Wing On department store in Shanghai held on a 30 year lease from Silas Hardoon at 50,000 taels of silver annually.

In the history of gangsters there has always been an unwritten glamour factor associated with it, a fascination that still grips us today through the medium of film. Glamour was also much written about of the Soong family, of whom Madame Chiang [May-ling] was one of 5 siblings. May-ling’s sister, Ching-lin married Sun Yat-sen, the father of Modern China. Her elder sister Ai-ling was married to H.H. Kung, finance minister of China, banker, economic adviser to Chiang-Kai-shek, was once the richest man in China and was 75th generation direct descendant of Confucius and a devout Christian.

T.V. Soong [Tse-ven] was the elder brother and held posts such as Governor of the Central Bank of China, Minister of Finance, was charged with negotiations with Stalin and was Chiang Kai-shek’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. He was a devout Methodist. Soong Zi-an was the younger brother and shunned direct involvement in politics but served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Bank of Guangzhou.

T.V.Soong and his wife Zhang Leyi

The Soong siblings can be likened to the Mitford sisters or the Kennedy children and like all society constructs, style icons are sought and when found become part of the hidden engine that motors the momentum of style evolution. Before the formation of the republic, the upper echelons of Chinese society aspired to replicate the Imperial court. The ending of the Qing Dynasty caused a style vacuum that, in the case of China, was filled remarkably quickly. One could even argue that Shanghai created far more style than Hong Kong, perhaps because Hong Kongers were a more fragmented society and one that was infused with the rigid framework of the British colonialist mindset; a condition that as yet had not become moribund.

This 4-piece tea and coffee set by the Shanghai retail silversmith Luen Hing [above] is a superb example of the ingenuity of Chinese silversmiths to create a unique fusion of traditional Chinese motifs and the Art Deco style. It is so redolent of Shanghai and the heady lifestyle that reigned during the first 35 years of the 20th century. The same can be said of this Tuck Chang tea set [also a Shanghai retail silversmith] that is slightly more staid, but nevertheless using the same fusion of Chinese and the Art deco style.

Early 20th century Shanghai and Hong Kong: two very different cities with two very different rules of law – both intent on building a vibrant, affluent modern world, expressing themselves in different ways, both with a strong Triad undercurrent – the real underground engine room that fuelled the extraordinary expressions of creativity in all its forms.

References:

The Art of War: Ron Gluckman, AsiaWeek, March 2000

The Soong Sisters: Emily Hahn, 1943

The First Lady of China: Harry Thomas, IBM Corp, 1943

Shanghai, The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City: Stella Dong, 2000

The Last Empress – Madame Chiang Kai-shek and the Birth of Modern China: Hannah Pakula, 2009